**The original "ending" to this story was written when things were very raw. And although it still exists on the internet, it lurks behind this post, unreadable to the general public (and more importantly, my kids). But I don't like loose ends. And those books and stories that don't have a proper ending frustrate me, and I wouldn't want to do that to anyone who has stumbled across this blog. So here we go...**
One of the harshest lessons a kid must learn is that their parents aren't perfect.
In fact, this is just one of the two main truths of life that we must come to learn of ourselves.
The first is that we will die. Accepting our mortality (if you're lucky and not in an accident or somehow realise it sooner) comes through middle age. It sort of creeps up on you and before you know it, you're a bloke in lycra on a bike, or a woman with a face full of Botox, both panicking that you're the wrong side of forty and haven't got your shit together yet.
The second truth is that you WILL make mistakes and you WILL have regrets.
But if the natural order has progressed as it should, before you accept these truths of yourself, you must first accept them of your parents.
Accepting that one day your parents will die is hard, but often far more hurtful is accepting that they also make mistakes.
To protect them from the sudden shock of "hang on, my parents aren't always right", I have always tried to show my kids my flaws. I am honest about my mistakes daily.
The end of this story was brutal. But there are also shades of grey, light and dark, frustration, and a whole lot of love throughout the whole thing.
And despite how monumentally devastating the finale was, I wouldn't change any of it.
I want my children to understand that.
And when they eventually hear what happened (as no doubt one day they will), I want them to know and understand that no one is ever perfect. And they'll come to accept that of themselves too, just as me and their dad have. There may be no excuse for some behaviour, but people make mistakes for their own reasons, and you can't always know why.
But what they can know, must know, is that while they cannot control others behaviour, and cannot control or undo things that happened in the past, they CAN control their response to it. And if they always chose love, as I have endeavoured to do, they will always have made the right choice.
THE END
